Sales Blog with Sales Tips

If you’re like me, you love buying a car. For starters, you love it because you get a new car. You also love it because you enjoy negotiating. I know this is a sales tips blog, but allow me to interject a quick buyer’s tip here. Don’t think for a second that you can out-negotiate a good car sales professional at a dealership. They know their stuff. Listen and learn from them.

“…this works about 90% of the time for those buyers who are capable of buying…”

Car Dealership Sales Tips
I always like observing the multitude of good old-fashioned sales techniques that car dealerships use. In many of today’s selling environments, these techniques would be quickly recognized by the buyer, not appropriate and counterproductive. However, there is one sales technique car dealerships frequently use that all of us should take advantage of whether we’re selling fishing lures, Boeing jets or cars.

Let me give you an example.

Buyer: “I really like the Toyota Avalon but the payments are going to be too high I’m afraid.”
Seller: “I understand. Maybe you could consider another car we offer, the Corolla. It is smaller and only comes with a four-cylinder engine. It’s not the car that the Avalon is, but it might fit better within your budget parameters.”
Buyer: “Corolla! My grandmother used to drive one of those when she retired. No way.”
Seller: “If you could stretch just a bit more on the monthly payment that might give us enough room to restructure the loan and enable you to get the car you really want.”
Buyer: “Okay, I think I could afford another $100 per month.”

Sales Newsletter: Decoy Marketing
This sales technique is called Decoy Marketing and can work in virtually any industry. You simply introduce a cheaper or inferior product to a customer who is balking at cost. The customer realizes that compared to what they want to buy, the decoy looks undesirable. They conclude that the extra cost is justifiable.

In 20+ years of sales and sales management, I’ve observed that this works about 90% of the time for those buyers who are capable of buying but are raising strong price objections.

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
Virtually everyone that is reading this sales blog works for a company that has products and services ranging from “economy” to “premium.” Creatively use your broad product line and this tactic to overcome price objections.

© 2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

You’re trying to guess what the words are, but you may be surprised. I’m not really looking for four separate words. What I have in mind is actually a sentence.

A question, to be exact.

“It will even work with our significant other.”

One of the Best Sales Tips You’ll Ever Get in this Sales Blog
So what is the question?

“Can you help me?”

That’s it. In sales this is one of the most powerful ways of finding out what we need to know while simultaneously creating a bond with our prospects and customers.

Sales Newsletter: Why This Question is so Powerful

• People like to help people. The vast majority of humans on this earth find it rewarding to help others…they even enjoy helping people in sales. I like helping other sales pros with sales tips. I, just like everyone else, like the feeling I get when helping someone.
• When we ask this question, we show some vulnerability. People respond positively to that.
• After helping someone, people always feel some degree of connection with the person they just helped.
• These four words have a way of making us look less “salesy” and more “real.” This is always a good thing.

Tim was a sales trainer who taught me this early in my career. I’ll be honest; I had my doubts. However, Tim was one of those trainers who would make customer calls with you. He practiced and demonstrated what he preached – how refreshing. After I saw him successfully use this question on a dozen prospects, I became a believer. It works.

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
This question actually works in all areas of our lives. It’s universal. It will even work with our significant other.

I’m obviously not the inventor of this potent question. It’s not new, yet I see very few sales pros using it. Why? I don’t know for sure. My guess is that it has something to do with why it is so effective in the first place.

We have to be a little vulnerable.

© 2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Answer 1: He was fired two years ago.
Answer 2: She died almost five years ago.
Answer 3: He was demoted about three years ago and is no longer a decision maker for your products and services at that company.

In the spirit of networking, a sales pro called me recently and wanted some sales tips on three employees at a company I had worked with recently. He was prospecting and had three names he had identified as decision makers. As he read their names I responded with the answers enumerated above.

“…asking for a dead person is not the way to start.”

Clearly he had the right intent. He was doing research before making an initial contact with a prospect. He had found some names and was calling me to get more data. But how could he have been so far off base? Can you imagine how warmly he would have been received if he had contacted the prospect asking for these people before I was able to set him straight?

Sales Tips: What Went Wrong?
The problem was that he had used one of the old-school lead databases to get names of decision makers. It has been my experience that the data we get from these sources can be outdated and inaccurate. I’m being too generous – make that virtually worthless at times. My networking friend had provided yet another example of how unreliable these information sources can be.

I believe we can do better than these old-school lead databases that employ highly disinterested and low paid call center employees to retrieve information and sell it to you or your company.

Sales Newsletter: There are Better Ways
Prospects are demanding that we know more about them when we contact them. We need our information to be current and accurate. There are some great tools available to us that can provide current and high quality lead information. These tools have been covered in this sales tips blog before. Please see “Further reading” below. The costs for the leads they provide can range from very reasonable to zero.

Business Networking: Ryze, LinkedIn, Plaxo
Directories of Companies and Business Professionals: Jigsaw, NetProspex

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
Calling a prospect and asking for a dead person is not the way to start. We can do better.

© 2010 Scott R. Sheaffer